In this post I am talking about lunches for elementary aged children. Why? That is the age range of our daughter. Since school starts Monday, we need to decide if your daughter is going to take a lunch or buy her’s.
Last school year, our daughter was happy taking a school lunch. Then about February she started asking for a hot lunch. This year she wants a hot lunch, because all her friends will be taking a hot lunch.
Most school lunches run about $1.90. Then those school who offer breakfast for the kids for around $1.25. Those families that are struggles there is a reduced price if not free. For the reduced or free school lunch program, you will need to contact for office at the school your child goes.
If you are wondering if it is more economical to pack your child a lunch of buy them a hot lunch, consider the following;
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- Lunch box or lunch bag runs about $12.00 (That is if the child does not lose it during the school year). The National Standard says our children are to have 180 days of school per school years. That means a school lunch box costs just under 7 cents per day.
- A sandwich cost between 25 cents to a dollar, depending if it is peanut butter or lunch meat. For our calculations we will say 50 cents per day on the average.
- An individual size juice container of 6.75 fluid ounces will cost just under 50 cents each.
- A snack of fruit (say a banana for our calculations)is currently running 47 cents per pound. A pound is roughly 3 bananas. That breaks down to another 15.6 per banana.
It cost to have a child take lunch to to school with them is $1.23 on the average.
What I did show is that there is savings for a child taking there own lunch is not a huge difference to them having a hot lunch at school. Over a week’s time the difference is $3.35. Well, that would add up to $67 per month.
I did not include plastic bags nor the time it takes to fix a lunch. These figures are per child. If you have more than one child in school you can multiply these figures by the number of children you have going to school.
